


Dream On

by MythicalCatie



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 06:36:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10077692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MythicalCatie/pseuds/MythicalCatie
Summary: Steven Hyde may present himself to be the toughest member of his social circle, but that is a far cry from the truth. The reality is that Steven is anything but tough, and in the dark of night is when that reality becomes most glaringly obvious.





	

There was a side of Steven Hyde that was presented to you and you only. It was a side that only you knew was even a part of him, a side that only shone through in the dark of night when you and he were curled up in bed together, finally asleep after whatever the day happened to bring you. It was a side that only crawled out of its hiding space deep in your love’s soul and into your life once again after he had been asleep for a couple of hours, sometimes a few on the rare evenings that he turned in early, and it was well into two or three in the morning. It was a side that only came out to play when you were comfortable and lying on his chest, unconsciously burrowing your face in the crook of his neck and breathing in his natural scent. It was a side that only came out when the room had been silent for a long while, the only sound being that of your and his soft breaths. It was a side that you never failed to nurture in the way that you knew he had always needed, even if he was too proud to admit it. It was a side that never left the four walls of your bedroom, a side that would be the death of your boy if word ever got out that it was real. It was a side that you’d never turn away no matter the circumstance, a side that you’d always nurse no matter the year, month, day, hour, or moment. It was a side that you only met due to one fateful Saturday when he accidentally fell asleep during a late night viewing of “ _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_ ”, which, for the benefit of full disclosure, he had only agreed to watch because he knew that it would bring a smile to your lovely face. It was a side that you hated had to be a part of him, a side that you wished wouldn’t cause him so much pain and suffering. It was a side that you wished wouldn’t be so cruel to him, but a side that you were glad to stitch back together the broken pieces of whenever it shattered like cheaply made glass. It was a side that was the cause of oceans of shed tears, hours of softly hummed melodies, and thousands of warm hugs that were just an inch this way of a death grip.

It was Steven Hyde’s weak side.

You had spent many nights with that side since the first time it happened. It was an ugly, evil side that had caused your Steven many worlds of pain, a side that was merciless in its torture, but a side that was a part of him nonetheless. It was a side that showed that he wasn’t as strong as he had always tried to present himself to be, a side that humanized him beyond what anybody else had ever seen. Steven’s weak side reminded him that yes, he had been dealt a very bad hand in life and yes, he had had a rough time for longer than he could remember. It brought him crashing down to the ground every time it reared its head and left it up to you to clean up the mess that it had left behind. You didn’t hate that Steven had a weak side for the pure fact of its existence. You were almost positive that everybody had one, and it was okay that he wasn’t the exception. You just hated that his weak side didn’t mean that he couldn’t do heavy lifting.

You hated that it had to be an emotional weakness, something that could and did hurt him time and time again. You wished every time that it came out that you could make it vanish with a snap of your fingers so that the pain would eventually become nothing more than a distant memory. If only it was that simple. If it was, it would have packed its bags and said its goodbyes long ago. Instead, it never left permanently. It only said, ‘ _I’ve had my fun for now, but I’ll be sure to drop by later_ ’. And it always did. Tonight, of course, was no different.

The sound that woke you was a quiet one, a soft, pleading whimper coming from the depths of your partner's throat. It never took much to rouse you anymore, the slightest noise bringing you out of your state of unconsciousness. This was partly due to the fact that you were so close to Steven’s body while sleep, but mostly because you had been conditioned to wake up quickly when signs began to show that the night was about to go downhill.  

Upon hearing it, you opened your eyes and rubbed them with tired fists, adjusting them to the room's current darkness once you pulled your hands away. After that, you turned your attention to the shadowed figure that lay beside you. All that you could make out in the black of the morning was his basic form, gorgeous curls and all. Carefully rolling off of Steven and turning over onto your stomach, resting your head on your hands, you watched the man quietly, waiting. Waiting to see if he had just made a lone random noise or if the whimper would soon turn into a problem that you had to handle.

You didn't reach out for him, didn't touch him even though you had the urge to, knowing that it might help to settle him. You didn't want to risk waking him if it wasn't necessary.

As you knew to expect, that one whimper turned into another. This one was louder and more strained and was followed by Steven beginning to stir.

That's how you knew that, no, it was not just an involuntary sound, and that you needed to get prepared to fix the arising situation. It was coming whether you liked it or not, and you needed to be ready for it.

So, just as quickly as you changed positions from lying on Steven’s torso to lying on your own, you sat up and settled yourself cross-legged on the bed, your body facing your boyfriend.  

Just on schedule, you heard the brown-haired male mutter the words, "No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What did I do? I didn't do anything wrong, please." The voice that he spoke in was soft and quiet. It held the innocence of a child and a terror that you had never heard from anywhere or any **one**  else despite it being barely above a whisper in terms of volume.

You hoped that it would pass, that it was just a quick flash of a dream and then it would go away, only to move on to a more pleasing visual, maybe of Steven doing something that he loved.

The dream didn't contain a flash so much as it did a cutscene, because the next thing you knew, before you had time to react, Steven was screaming bloody murder, his shrieks coming out at the top of his lungs. _Please don't! I'll be good, I'm sorry! Just please stop!_ You're hurting me! In a split second, he was shrieking and thrashing on the bed and it caused you to panic for a moment before you remembered that you had been through nights like this one thousands of times before and that you knew **exactly**  what to do.

The next movement your arm made was to vigorously shake the body that lied on the right side of the mattress, forcing him back and forth.

It was the exact opposite of the wake-up call he received after each and every long, grueling night had ended. Every morning, you'd plant a gentle kiss on his forehead and then on his lips, speaking softly to him and letting him know that the sun had risen and that it was time to start the brand new day. His nose would open before his eyes did, and he'd smell the delicious breakfast that you had cooked for him, the one that was waiting on the kitchen table for him. That rousing was warm and inviting, it was tender and caring. It embodied everything that Steven needed.

This... This was not that. This was rough, hands gripping and squeezing his arms so tightly that they were just this side of about to bruise. This was shouting and ear-piercing. This was meant to wake Steven up with a start, not delicately and carefully. It was meant to snap him out of a bad place. **It**  stood for everything that Steven needed and tried so desperately to forget.

"Steven!" you called out, loudly enough to hear yourself over his screaming. If you could hear yourself, the chances were that he could hear you as well. "Steven, wake up! Wake up! Steven!"

It didn't take that much more to bring the twenty-one year old out of his nightmare and jolting awake into reality. You fumbled for the lamp on the bedside table when this happened, flicking the switch on so that you could see your boyfriend's face.

The man was panting heavily, his chest rising and falling, then rising again. His pupils were blown wide and he looked damn near ready to tremble out of his skin.

"Steven, baby," you said softly, your voice smooth like silk and warm like a freshly dried blanket, unlike the harsh and jarring tone that it held a moment previously . "Baby, come here," you instructed, holding your arms out for him. "Come here."

You stretched your legs out as Steven began to move over to you, crawling in order to cross to the side of the bed that you were on.

In an effort not to waste time, as soon as he was close enough, you pulled the man into your lap, guiding his head to lay on your shoulder.

He was taller than you, so in order to lay his head on your shoulder without hurting his neck, you had to arrange Steven in a way so that the majority of the lower part of his legs was on the bed. That was the only way that your heights would align enough for him to be able to comfortably do so.

"Tell me what happened, baby," you requested gingerly, tangling your left hand in his curls to run your fingers through them. "It's okay to tell me. There's nobody here but you and me." _Nobody will jump out of the closet or out from under the bed or anywhere else and hurt you. That's all over now. You're safe with me._

Steven's breaths were labored as he sat on your thighs, clinging to you as if you were a life preserver. He didn't respond to your question right away due to the fact that his heart was still simultaneously pounding against his insides at a million miles an hour and falling to his stomach.

But you didn't mind and you waited patiently for your significant other to answer your request, allowing him to take the time that he needed to compose himself and form a coherent thought. This was nothing out of the ordinary, of course, and it didn't worry you anymore when there was a long pause between the moment that you asked your question and when Steven answered it. He eventually got around to it, after all, and there was always a good reason for his temporary silences.

This time, it took a bit longer than usual for Steven to answer, which meant that it was most likely one of his more graphic nightmares.

While you waited, you simply held him close as he furled his hands in the fabric of your tee shirt, seemingly unable to let go. He hid his face in the side of your neck, not unlike a child hiding his face in the back of his mother's pant leg upon being introduced to a stranger. You just rubbed his back, welcoming the contact without complaint. Even if you didn't like feeling of his soft features against your flesh, which you certainly did, Steven needed the comfort of your white vanilla scent more than anything at the moment, and there was no chance that you would ever, or could ever, turn him away.

When you least expected it, a voice that was usually strong and sarcastic cut through the room like a butterknife, now weak and unable to muster the will to be forceful, confident.

"I-I was ten," Steven began meekly. "W-Well, almost. An hour until I turned it officially. Edna came into my room, said... she said she had a s-surprise for me."

There was no doubt in your mind that you knew where this story was going. You had heard it hundreds of times. It was always the same.

"I couldn't tell at the time. I didn't understand. I was s-so young. But she was h-high, maybe a little drunk. I knew it was my b-birthday, of course. I'd been excited about it for weeks. D-Double digits, man, and I thought the surprise h-had something to do with that. S-So I went with her, you know, because why would I have a reason not to? She was my mom."

You almost wanted to tell Steven to stop his story. After all, you knew how it played out. You knew how it ended, yet began something else all at once. But you didn't, because one thing that you also knew was that it was beneficial for Steven to talk it out to you, describe it to you. It helped to take a weight of sorts off of his chest, and even though it never failed to open up the floodgates that held back his tears, he always needed to walk you through it.

So, instead of what your entire being was telling you to do, you quietly listened, nodding along even though you knew that he couldn't see you because his face was still hidden.

"Go on, sweetheart," you encouraged softly when there was a break in his stream of words. "I'm listening. It's okay. You can tell me."

Even though Steven had recounted the very same event for you many times in the past, it never got any easier to explain when the memory chose to come back to haunt him. As a result of this, you had to reassure him throughout the demented storytime that you were, in fact, there to hear and to help him, and that nobody was going to lay so much as a finger on him if you had anything to say about it.

"W-Well, when we got to the living room, there was a guy there. H-He was tall and muscular, dark hair. I-I thought nothing of it, you know, because since Bud left the year before, Edna swapped guys like she swapped underwear. S-She always introduced them the same way." As he said this, the loosely thrown around title flashed in your mind. It was one that parents had their children address their dear friends by, one that didn't necessarily mean a blood or marital connection, but one that could and did in the correct circumstances. "Uncle. Every guy was 'Uncle'. Uncle Jim, Uncle Ray, Uncle Whateverthehell. I could never remember. There were so many of them that eventually, it got too hard to keep track and as soon as they were out the door, their name was out of my mind. But this guy... I'll never forget his name." No matter how hard he might try, you knew that it'd forever be burned into his brain like a brand on a rancher’s cow. He was the start of it all. How could his moniker blow away like the wind in the way that the names of the other men did? "'Steven, this is Uncle Charles', Edna told me. There was something... s-something sinister about her smile that told me that things were about to go really s-sour."

As you ran your fingers through your boyfriend's brown, curled hair, you felt his face dig deeper into your neck. It was almost as if he was trying to enter your body and hide away rather than get as close to it as he possibly could.

At this, you gently guided his head up and away from your neck.

"Steven, honey. I want you to look at me now, okay? Look at me while you finish the story."

This was an instruction that you had given many times in the past. Oftentimes after just waking up, if Steven was recounting a dream and his face was hidden, whether it be in your neck, a pillow, or even if he just had his eyes closed, he had a tendency to get carried away in his account and start to believe that whatever he was detailing was actually happening. It was understandable. After all, he had just woken up. He was groggy and not yet fully his normal self. Because of this, you preferred to keep eye contact with Steven when the story was soon to be at a graphic point.

It was a way to keep him grounded and remind him that the only other person with him was you and that the past was just that.

It was a way to remind him that the years that had come and gone were not going to jump out from the closet, crawl out from under the bed, or come around the corner and drag him away kicking and screaming to put him through the same pain that he had escaped from the decade before.

It was a way to remind him that you were there only to help, to keep him safe and to comfort him, not to harm him and do him wrong like so many others had done in the past.

It was a way to remind him that he was never going to be hurt again for as long as you had a say in it, which, as far as you could tell, would be forever and always.

It was a way to **be there for him**.

When your boyfriend didn't do as asked and instead fixed his eyes on his lap, you gently grabbed his cheeks and brought his head back up so that his eyes met yours. You were careful not to be forceful, but instead ginger, in order not to frighten him. You'd never want that, but especially not now of all of the available instances.

"Steven," you said once again, very carefully and so lovingly that your heart could almost be seen dripping from your tongue. "Go on, honeybun. I'm right here. I'm listening. Whenever you're ready."

The twenty-one year old took a deep breath in response to your string of statements in order to compose himself. His mind was ten steps ahead of his mouth, and he was already mentally in the climax of the story, the point where it was nothing but downhill from there.

The tears that were beginning to well in his eyes were obvious and you couldn't miss them if you tried. You knew that he would try to hold them back for as long as he could, but that eventually, they would escape from his gorgeous brown orbs and flow freely down his cheeks. He wouldn't try to stop them then, or even wipe them away with a swipe of the heel of his palm across his face, because he knew that it was no use. They would just keep coming, falling on top of one another and layering on his face, wetting it thoroughly. By that point, Steven would just have to wait it out until his tear ducts dried up and there was no more liquid left to expel. Then and only then would he be finished.

His vision clouded by the droplets of water in front of his eyes, Steven fixed his gaze on you, shakily inhaled once more, and continued speaking. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, if his mouth was telling a certain part of the story, his brain would follow along with it and not move ahead before he was ready.

"I knew that... Even back then, I could tell that things were going to head downhill. It wasn't the usual smile I got when she told me that she had a surprise for me. This one was... evil," he said, a shiver running through him. "I'd never seen it before. But she said something... something about how since I was turning ten, there was something I had to do to earn it. W-Well, something that had to be done for me, really. I just... I would just have to lay really still and take it."

Now, just because you were supportive of Steven and listened carefully every time he told one of his stories didn't mean that you liked hearing them. It didn't mean that at all. You never failed to be disgusted by them, and you never failed to wonder why he ever even had the option to tell them. His brain shouldn't even be able to think of those particular memories as something that was a possibility, nevermind the honest truth. He shouldn't wake up in the middle of the night sweating bullets and in tears because of his dreams. He should sleep through the night fully and completely, only waking up to the sunshine peeking through the curtains that covered your window. He shouldn't still be exhausted from his slumber due to the fact that it was interrupted by terror. He should wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day that lie ahead of him, not like a zombie rising from the grave after a thousand years. While you were glad to be the person that was there for Steven, the one that he turned to when he felt too helpless to function, you couldn't help but hate that it was necessary.

"The n-next thing I knew.... I... I was naked and she was holding me down, telling me that..." After that came yet another deep inhalation of oxygen along with another pause. However, this one was much more brief than the ones that came before it. It only lasted a couple of seconds. "She was telling me that I should just stay quiet and take what was about to come, that this was what all ten year old little boys had to do when they turned ten."

You knew that Steven was never given a reason as to **why**  it was "necessary". Although he eventually, as an adult, put the pieces of a very hellish puzzle together and figured out the real reason that he had come to be prostituted by the woman who was supposed to be his guardian, as a child, he had just been expected to accept what Edna, his mother, the one that was supposed to take care of and love him, had told him as the truth simply because he was her child, **a**  child, and she was the adult in the situation. Her reasoning, if she had any, was simply that because she was the adult, he had to obey without question. But you couldn't fathom how any reasonable mother, or **any**  mother for that matter, could intentionally put her child through pain and suffering. Mothers are supposed to love and protect their children, not condone and be the **reason**  that they are harmed. Mothers are not supposed to be stonefaced and fully composed when their babies are screaming out in pain. They're supposed to be hysterical, willing to do anything that it takes to end the peril that their child is experiencing. If not anything else, though, they certainly aren't supposed to be holding them down and telling them to "take your pain like a big boy", because no matter what Edna may have said, what Steven experienced was not simply a part of growing older, a product of the passing years. It was because the world was and still is a cruel place with cruel people, and you were sorry to say that your boyfriend had been a victim of a few of them.

"I-I didn't know what was going on at the time. A-All I knew was that she was holding me down and he was on top of me and..."

You nodded in encouragement when his voice faltered again. I must have been at least the fifth time. You didn't say anything verbally that time, but the softness of your eyes told him all that he needed to know.

This time, Steven decided to spare you, and himself, the details and let them simply be implied instead of explicitly spoken. It was simply easier for both of you. To somebody who had never heard the story before, it would have sounded like there was a chunk missing and that the dots failed to connect properly. But to you, the missing piece was easily imagined, and it was rather seamless for Steven to skip to saying, "and I was screaming in pain a-and looking at her and begging for her to h-huh-help me, but she wouldn't. She wouldn't help me, Y/N. She just told me to shut up so the neighbors wouldn't hear us. I kept asking him to st-stop, telling him that I was sorry. I didn't do anything wrong. Why were they punishing me?"

With that, the tears began to fall from Steven's eyes, droplet after droplet, getting thicker with each word that he spoke. Soon, they were cascading down his face, just like you knew they would, but he kept his eyes on you in order to stay focused and in the same reality that you were living.

"T-That asshole kept going and going and I thought he'd never stop. I wanted to shove my arm in my face and b-bite it to k-kuh-keep from screaming, but Edna was holding both of them down, so I couldn't and she just kept yelling and telling me to be q-quiet, b-but it hurt. I was b-bleeding when he was finished. I couldn't see it at first, but I could f-feel it. I stayed on the floor until I was told to get up, b-because by that point I was already scared and she had... and I didn't know what would happen if I moved. I didn't even know if I could move because I was in so much pain. I-I just hid my face in my arms and cried because what else was there to d-do?"

Momentarily, the slightly older man shut his eyes before reopening them, likely in an attempt to clear his vision. His eyes were now becoming reddened from crying and would soon turn bloodshot, as they always did after a tearful fit.

"Yeah, baby. I know, I know," you sighed, smoothing his curls back and kissing his forehead as he sobbed.

"E-Eventually he was gone and she told me that I could move, and to s-stuh-stop crying because it wasn't really that bad. S-She was so cold and... and u-unfeeling. How could she... W-Why wouldn't she help me, Y/N? Why wouldn't she fucking h-huh-help me?!"

At that, Steven dropped eye contact and once again buried his face in your neck. His story was over, so why would he not be allowed to hide, right? His sobs wracked his entire body and broke your heart into even smaller pieces than it was already in. To think that all of his suffering was caused by the desire to fund a stupid fucking **drug habit**.

Combing your fingers through Steven's hair, you softly hummed and swayed your body side to side as you held him close in an attempt to soothe him. Gentle shushing and circled backrubs had long ago become a staple in your nightly routine. It hadn't taken long to learn how to comfort your significant other, and the two main components were the sounds that came from your mouth and the motions and careful touches of your hands.

"Shh... Shh... I know, sweetheart. I know. I know. It was awful. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

It was all that you could say, really. What else could you say to him when he was bawling so hard that he could cry a river in your bedroom? That's not to say that it wasn't rightfully so. The man had every reason to cry, scream, and beg questions that he should never have to, because if the horror that was the morning of his tenth birthday wasn't enough, it didn't end there. From then on, Steven's body was considered a viable source of funding for his mother's drug addiction and he was whored out to countless men so that Edna could purchase her "goods".

It went on for years until he was finally big and strong enough to defend himself against the monsters that he had come to know in his day to day life, but by the time he finally ended it, the damage had already been done. By then, Steven had already become broken beyond repair and scarred for the rest of his life. He was already marked for nights of awful dreams and days of flashbacks that could ruin even the best of moments. There was no turning back the clock, no undoing the sins that were committed inside the four walls of his Wisconsin home.

What hurt you the most was that there was no making him truly **better**. Sure, he could see all the therapists in the world and you could hold him and reassure him that it was all alright every night of your life until the day that you died, but there was no washing away the memories. There was no forgetting. There were no do-overs, no second chances, no turning back time and turning that poor excuse for a human being in the first time she shot up so that nothing bad could ever happen to your baby boy. There just... wasn't. He would have to carry those memories around with him for as long as he lived, and there was no way around it. He would forever be broken, and all of the mending that you could do would simply be tape and glue, never enough defense for the next time the dam broke.

"I'm so sorry, Steven. I'm so sorry," you whispered over and over like a broken record, knowing that there was nothing else that you could say at the moment would be useful, not even the answer to his inquiries. Although Steven desperately wanted answers to the questions that he asked, when he wasn't yet calm, he was too emotional to listen, or, really, to do anything but lie against you and bawl. So, you decided to wait until his breathing was steady and his face was simply damp instead of completely soaked to respond to him in any other way than apology. Until his tear ducts had dried up and he was sniffling instead of wheezing because he couldn't catch his breath. Then you'd explain.   

The next few minutes was heartrending to experience. Your boyfriend sobbed and clung to you, shaking against you so roughly that he almost knocked you back with the force. He continually pleaded with you to tell him **why**.

Why didn't Edna stop what was going on?

Why was she the one that started it, allowed it?

Why him? Why was **he**  the one that was made to suffer? He had always been such a good boy.

Why couldn't she find another way to get her drug money? Why did she have to shoot up at all?

Why couldn't Steven have a normal childhood with a white picket fence, a dog, and two happy, loving, **sober**  parents?

Why was **he**  plagued with terror? Why couldn't he be **normal**?

 **Why**?

It took a good while for Steven's breath to level out and his tears to subside. You weren't watching the clock, but you'd estimate that it had been at least twenty minutes if not longer. When he finished, you gently ran the pad of your thumb across his face and dried his eyes. Clearing his vision, you also planted yet another kiss on his forehead before wiping the rest of his face with the hem of your shirt.

"Love. I need you to listen to be very carefully okay?" you requested, hugging him more tightly against your body. "Nothing that happened was your fault. You cannot be held accountable for the fact that she couldn't handle being a mother, or being a decent human being for that matter. It is not your fault that she had a drug issue, and it is not your fault that she chose evil means to finance it. None of it was your fault. Absolutely **none**  of it. You did not do anything wrong, and you did not do anything to deserve the treatment that you got. You were just... dealt a bad hand of cards. You were given a shitty mother who didn't know how to handle her responsibilities when times got tough. She turned to a form stress relief that she shouldn't have, and that's nobody's fault but her own. She made the choices that led her down that path. You did not make them for her, and you were nothing but a victim of her destruction. You were nothing but a good kid, love, but even if you weren't, it wouldn't have warranted what she did to you. I know that it was a very, very bad few years for you, and that you had some experiences that were more horrific than fathomable, but I just want- No. I need you to know that that doesn't change how I feel about you and that I will always love you, no matter what. You are not tainted, or dirty, or **used** , and I never want to hear you call yourself any of those words or any word that’s similar. You are funny, and smart, and the biggest sweetheart I know, even if you don't show it all the time. You are worth so much more than your worst moments, no matter what she or any of those vile men told you. I love you so much, and I will always be there for you, okay? You are perfect to me just the way you are. Do you understand that, baby?"

In response, Steven nodded quietly and smiled a forced smile for you, mostly to show thanks, but partly to show that he felt better, however slightly, due to your words. "Y-Yeah," he sniffled, "I understand. T-Thank you, [your nickname]. I love you too."

"She really missed out with you, Steven, you whispered softly. "She really messed up. You're wonderful, and she missed out. She's **missing**  out. But it's her loss, not yours. You didn't lose anything but dead weight. Now let's lie back down, huh?" you suggested along with your soft assurances, quickly adding on, as if reading his mind, "You don't have to go back to sleep if you don't want to. Just get comfortable with me and cuddle, yeah? We can just cuddle." _"Maybe that'll make you feel better"_ "I promise there's no sleep unless you say so."

Nervously, Steven agreed to your suggestion. He knew that you wouldn't make him do anything that he didn't want to do, but also that the recommendations that you did make were purely in his best interest.

So, carefully, he removed himself from your lap and slipped under the rumpled covers on your bed.

You followed soon after him, getting comfortable before pulling him as close to you as you could get him, ready to hold him all night long and not let go even once.

There was a side of Steven Hyde that was presented to you and you only. It was a side that only you knew was even a part of him, a side that only shone through in the dark of night, when you and he were curled up in bed together, finally asleep after whatever the day happened to bring you. It was a side that only crawled out of its hiding space deep in your love’s soul and into your life once again after he had been asleep for a couple of hours, sometimes a few on the rare evenings that he turned in early, and it was well into two or three in the morning. It was a side that took the form of dreams from the depths of the Underworld, amounts of tears large enough to sustain a water source for a week, and questions that should never have to pass his lips. It was a side that brought only pain and resentment, a sense of an emptiness in his heart that could never be filled. It was a side that you never failed to nurture in the way that you knew he had always needed, even if he was too proud to admit it. It was a side that never left the four walls of your bedroom, a side that would be the death of your boy if word ever got out that it was real. It was a side that you’d never turn away no matter the circumstance, a side that you’d always nurse no matter the year, month, day, hour, or moment. It was a side that you hated that he had for the simple reason that it brought him pain. It was a side that could be a lot more stable had it not been for the fact that the world is an awful place with even worse people inhabiting it.

It was Steven Hyde's weak side.

And you were happy to be there to help him become strong again.

 


End file.
